MxMo September 2010: Lime

[Chris Amirault]

For a good while now, Paul Clarke over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays:

Mixology Monday is a monthly online cocktail party. Since launching in April 2006, Mixology Monday has attracted scores of participating bloggers and thousands of curious readers, all coming together on a monthly basis to share drink recipes and related information in a friendly online environment.

The process is quite simple: each month, a host, working with the moderator, selects a theme for the upcoming event, which is announced on various blogs and forums (including this one), and on or before the event date (a Monday — hence the name), participating bloggers join the party by posting a drink recipe or other post related to the theme. Each participant notifies the host that they’ve joined in, and soon after the event, the host posts a roundup, listing each participant.

The next MxMo takes place Monday, September 20, hosted by Doug over at Pegu Blog. The theme? Lime:

Limes are an ingredient. Limes are a garnish. A bowl of them makes a beautiful and functional ornament for the bar. While they aren’t a floor wax, at least they can be a dessert topping….

A capacious MxMo topic, I'd say! I'll email everything posted here by Monday, September 20 at midnight to Doug. I am assuming that anyone reading this post has at least three dozen limes on the counter already and thus should be well-prepared. Me, I'm wondering about the leaves on my lime tree....

[mkayahara]

Personally, I'll be disappointed if I don't see at least one recipe involving nixtamalization...

[Chris Amirault]

Damn you, Kayahara! I was trying to figure out how to make that joke in the OP....

[EvergreenDan]

Wow, this is kind of a hard category for me. Sort of like "cocktails made with ice", but not quite. When I think of lime-forward drinks, the obvious choices seem too boring: Margarita, Daiquiri, Caipirinha, Mojito, Gimlet, etc. And I don't have lime bitters for an end-run.

Gonna have to think about this one a bit.

[thirtyoneknots]

Wow, this is kind of a hard category for me. Sort of like "cocktails made with ice", but not quite. When I think of lime-forward drinks, the obvious choices seem too boring: Margarita, Daiquiri, Caipirinha, Mojito, Gimlet, etc. And I don't have lime bitters for an end-run.

Gonna have to think about this one a bit.

I take exception to the charge that a Daiquiri is boring. One of the world's finest drinks, when made right.

[EvergreenDan]

Not too boring to drink -- too boring to write about. I love all these drinks too! Well, maybe not the gimlet 'cuz I don't care for Rosie's.

[Kent Wang]

Surprisingly enough, here in China real limes are hard to get. Many places have green lemons which look like limes on the outside but are yellow on the inside and lack the funkiness of real limes. You have to get the imported limes from Brazil which are around $0.66 each through a delivery company. That's pretty tough when I'm used to paying $0.20 a lime or even less back in Texas.

That said, has anyone tried kaffir limes in their cocktails? I used to have a kaffir lime tree. I think Chris does. The leaves muddled or steeped into an infusion would be promising.

[JAZ]

I'm one of the few who actually like Rose's Lime Juice, as I explain in my article Any Other Name. Now, however, I make my own lime cordial (which contains kaffir lime leaves and peel as well as lime juice). Here's my recipe:

1 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 cup demerara sugar

2 ounces gin

3/4 cup water

5 kaffir lime leaves

Rind of one kaffir lime (dried or fresh)

Zest of one Persian lime

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dried mango powder (amchoor)

5 ounces of lime juice, divided

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sugars in the gin and water. Add the leaves, rind, zest, salt, amchoor, and 2 ounces of the lime juice and bring to a simmer. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes and then remove from the heat. Add the remaining 3 ounces of lime juice and let cool. Strain through a very fine strainer or cheesecloth. Keep refrigerated; this will last at least a month.

[Chris Amirault]

That said, has anyone tried kaffir limes in their cocktails? I used to have a kaffir lime tree. I think Chris does. The leaves muddled or steeped into an infusion would be promising.

Yep, I have a lime tree and have been wondering about this myself....

[Kent Wang]

How about muddling the leaves as you would a mint julep, a kaffir julep if you will.

Also, it seems that many of the cocktails that use lime seem to do so because of historical, geographical reasons: margarita, daiquiri, caipirinha all originating in the tropics where lime trees are more prevalent. In the rest of the cocktail world, lemon dominates. So why not try any of the classic cocktails that call for lemon with lime instead?

Conversely, I've had to make daiquiris here with lemon a few times, though that's for another topic.

[FireAarro]

Limes are like $2 apiece down here at the moment, the bars are fuming

[haresfur]

Limes are like $2 apiece down here at the moment, the bars are fuming

Yes, not good timing for this MixMo but I wandered my way in through the back door.

I had been thinking about exploring sherry cocktails, in part because a friend gave me a little bottle of Polish mead that I thought might be an interesting substitution for sherry. But a substitution in what? That will have to wait for another night though, because I'm at my limit.

Sherry is daunting since there is such a variety from sweet to dry and all the intimidating oleroso, fino, amontillado, stuff. But my parents were partial to a spot of Bristol cream or Bristol milk, or whatever and as a teenager I was happy to join in a sip if offered.

Now I find myself in the land of reasonably reasonable fortified wines, Australia. But that has it's own problems: It is bad enough that cocktail recipes are often vague about what type of sherry to use, but even if specified, how do I translate into the local product? After much head scratching in the liquor store, I gave up and bought a bottle of generic cream sherry, figuring if it didn't do the job in a drink, I could always just hit myself over the head with the bottle.

In the old cocktail books, sherry seems to show up mainly in variations of generic drinks and in things like flips, which are out since I'm trying to cut down on the cholesterol. So it was back to eGullet, excuse me, the eGullet Society for Cullinary Arts & Letters, to figure out what to mix. Luckily there is a port and sherry cocktail topic to provide guidance. I say guidance because I tend to find something that sounds promising and then figure out how to come close with my rather spartan liquor supply.

I settled on a loose interpretation of the SanRu. I had Dubonnet but no Cherry Heering. No matter, Cascade brewery makes a nice raspberry syrup to add a fruit component.

SaRu(ish)

1 oz "cream" sherry

1 oz Seagrams gin

1 oz Dubonnet rouge

1/2 tsp Cascade raspberry syrup

build over ice.

At that point it was one of those "sequential" drinks: raspberry, then sherry, then Dubonnet. The gin surprisingly hid in the background. But something was missing. Hmm, garnish. There in the fridge was a tiny remaining slice of lime, precious as gold.

And that's the thing about lime: you can load up a sour with lime juice and make a nice drink... or you can add a tiny bit of lime to a drink to turn something decent into something special.

[EvergreenDan]

I made a Caipirinha gussied-up with kumquats and herbal liqueur. A Batida, actually:

http://www.kindredcocktails.com/cocktail/old-sao-paolo

Old Sao Paolo

  2 oz Cachaça
1/2 oz Elisir M. P. Roux (or Green Chartreuse)
1/2    Lime (muddled)
  2    Kumquat (muddled)
1/2 t  Simple syrup (if needed)
  4 ds Fee WBA bitters
  1    Orange zest (as garnish)

Muddle kumquats (or other flavorful orange, skin on) and lime. Add other
ingredients except simple syrup. Taste and add simple syrup if needed if
kumquats are very sour. Double strain, rocks, lowball glass. Orange zest

Chris: I submitted this directly, so no need for you to send it along with the others from this thread.

Moderators: Can you make the styling for the 'code' tag a little bigger?

Edited September 20, 2010 by EvergreenDan (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I got my fall order from Penzey's the other day, and I cycled out some old white cardamom for new. Had a bit of Tito's vodka for a tincture, and when lime popped up as a MxMo theme, I figured a White Lady variation was just the thing:

2 oz Plymouth gin

1 oz lime juice

1 oz Cointreau

1 tsp white cardamom tincture

2 dashes Scrappy's grapefruit bitters

[Tri2Cook]

Very interesting, some tasty sounding creations. I love doing online challenges, I frequently participate in TGRWT and used to do the Royal Foodie Joust when it was running, but I have a lot to learn in the cocktail world before I'm going to even attempt to create something and put it out there for all to see.